Study says Henry boom a bust in quality growth

Kevin Duffy
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
December 6, 2001

Henry County's population may be booming, but its standard of living is
declining, an Atlanta research firm says.

"Job growth, per capita income and earnings are all struggling to keep
up, and overall Henry County is experiencing a decline in its standard
of living," according to Market Street Services, Inc.

The $85,000 study, called Henry Tomorrow, is being funded by businesses
and government entities. The goal of Henry Tomorrow is to come up with a
strategy for economic and community develop- ment.

The county has not had a plan for addressing the many challenges that
confront one of the fastest growing counties in the United States, said
Hans Broder, a retired banker who is chairman of the Henry Tomorrow
steering committee.

"It's amazing to me that we don't have any clear direction on what we
should do," he said.

Market Street found that the county's per capita income in 1999 was
$21,416, compared with $28,546 in the nation and $27,324 in Georgia.

"In addition, per capita income in Henry County is increasing at a
slower pace, causing residents to fall even further behind the rest of
the state and the nation," Market Street says.

"The reality is that Henry County is growing but not developing."

The company's work will be completed in February. CEO J. Mac Holladay
presented the firm's findings thus far to the Henry Council for Quality
Growth, a new group of business people that wants to help shape the
county's growth.

According to Market Street, more than 85 percent of the county's
population growth is due to people moving to Henry from other parts of
the United States, but most are not bringing a lot of spending power.

"People moving into Henry County have lower incomes than people already
in the county," the company says.

Market Street also found that during the 1990s the county saw a decline
in high-paying manufacturing, transportation and communications jobs.
"These lost jobs have been largely replaced by the expanding retail and
services sector, two of the lowest-paying employment sectors."

More than 50 percent of Henry's jobs in 1999 were in the retail and
service industries, whose wages are the lowest and fourth lowest,
respectively, the company says.

Market Street also says the county needs to do a better job of making
sure its young people are highly educated.

"Henry County continues to lag behind its neighbors and the nation in
educational attainment," it says. "However, educational attainment in
K-12 grades . . . is improving and high school dropout rates are low."

Henry also lags in the number of college graduates, based on 11-year-old
statistics, the most recent available. In 1990, only 16.3 percent of
county residents had college degrees, compared with 42 pecent for
comparable counties, 24.3 percent for Georgia and 26.5 percent for the
nation, Market Street reports.

"Educational attainment is a key indicator of workforce quality and
largely dictates the kinds of jobs an area can support," the company
says.

"We've got to get our kids going to school and staying there," Holladay
told more than 80 people attending the Quality Growth luncheon last
week. One bit of good news: The county's crime rate is low, Holladay
said.

Using Market Street's findings, Henry Tomorrow plans to recommend how
the county can improve its quality of life, which encompasses education,
the arts, recreation and the environment.

"We want to assure that Henry County is highly competitive with other
communities as we compete for companies . . . that pay well and offer
good benefits," Broder said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Commuting habits have changed

Michael Pearson
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 29, 2001

When Mike Harvey of Alpharetta decided to leave Dallas a decade ago for
a job in metro Atlanta, he also decided against lengthy commutes.

Harvey, who is a vice president at Equifax in its Alpharetta office,
passed on less expensive homes elsewhere in metro Atlanta for one just
10 minutes from his office.

"The quality of life is a whole lot better when you're not spending a
whole bunch of time on the road," he said.

Harvey's decision illustrates half of a twin trend among Fulton County
commuters, including those in Atlanta, over the last decade, according
to a nationwide survey conducted by the Census Bureau. The number of
drivers with the shortest and longest commutes has increased
dramatically since 1990, while the number of drivers with more typical
10- to 29-minute trips hardly grew at all.

According to an analysis of the survey by The Atlanta
Journal-Constitution, the number of Fulton commuters whose trip was no
more than 10 minutes grew nearly 44 percent, while the number of drivers
with hour-plus commutes increased by 72 percent. The number of those in
the middle, the 10- to 29-minute commuters, rose by only 2.4 percent.

Stability in that middle group, which accounts for 44 percent of Fulton
County commuters, is to be expected, said Jane Hayse, transportation
planning director for the Atlanta Regional Commission.

Most people seem to tolerate one-way commutes only up to about 30
minutes, she said. After that, people begin making changes to keep their
daily round-trip under an hour.

"Total trips are increasing by millions. Congestion is increasing.
Somehow the model is suggesting that people are adjusting to keep the
same travel time even though other conditions may be changing," she
said.

Those adjustments include public transportation, which saw a 6.7 percent
increase over the 1990 census figures, and carpooling, which experienced
a 25 percent increase, according to the survey.

Still, 75 percent of Fulton commuters said they drive to work alone, up
from about 72 percent in 1990.

Moving to save time

Some people have also moved to be closer to their jobs. For instance,
census figures show Atlanta's population grew by 20,000 people between
1990 and 2000, reversing a long trend of population loss in the region's
core city.

Norton Wilks is one who moved into the city. He sold his home in East
Point to buy a Buckhead condominium nearer his job at a financial
services company.

"It wasn't the worst commute in the world, but I want to spend less time
in my car, not more," he said.

Although congestion has increased throughout the metro area, including
in the city of Atlanta, the survey shows the new intown residents'
strategy of working nearer their jobs is paying off.

While the rest of metro Atlanta has seen commuting times rise, those for
city residents actually fell over the decade by about 21 percent.

But there are metro residents who accept lengthy commutes.

Beth Sowell spends up to an hour a day commuting from her home in
Alpharetta to her job in Tucker, a 35-mile commute.

"I accept it. It's just what we're going to have to do," said Sowell, a
BellSouth general manager.

But she does acknowledge the lengthy drive has an impact on her work and
personal lives. If she and her husband want to spend a Friday night out
on the town, she has to take a half-day off work just to be ready on
time.

"It's pretty pathetic, isn't it?" she said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Commuters in traffic longer
Census says average is 31 minutes

Larry Hartstein and John Ghirardini
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 25, 2001

Sarah Agbe-Davies, who commutes from Norcross to Decatur, says she feels
like she's in traffic all the time.

"You have to plan your life around traffic," said the sales
representative for Daimler Chrysler.

Commutes are long throughout metro Atlanta, but newly released census
data show that Gwinnett residents are worse off than others.

Gwinnett's average one-way commute hit 31 minutes in 2000, a five-minute
increase over 1990. Those figures also were higher than for Cobb, DeKalb
and Fulton counties.

In 1990, Cobb residents had the longest one-way average. But Gwinnett
overtook Cobb during the last decade.

Jane Hayes, chief of transportation planning for the Atlanta Regional
Commission, said she had not yet had a chance to study the new figures.
But she speculated on why Gwinnett's commutes are the longest.

"It's the tremendous growth that's been in Gwinnett, plus the limited
amount of transportation improvements that have been able to move
forward in the last few years," Hayes said. "That just creates more
travel time."

Until this month's launch of an express bus service, Gwinnett was the
only one of the big four without a public transit system.

But Hayes said she doubted that the absence of transit accounted for the
longer commute times.

The latest data come from the Census Bureau's Supplemental Survey 2000,
which was sent to 700,000 people nationwide. Because of the survey's
size, only Georgia's largest counties were big enough to supply
statistically valid results.

More than any other county's residents, people who live in Gwinnett say
traffic is the most urgent problem in metro Atlanta, according to a poll
conducted this year for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Fifty percent
cited traffic, while 15 percent named public schools and 10 percent
crime. By comparison, 45 percent of Cherokee residents and 39 percent of
DeKalb residents ranked traffic as the region's most pressing problem.
Sheila Mathews, who commutes from Norcross to a mortgage business on
Peachtree Dunwoody Road, agrees that the congestion is getting worse.

"I usually take back roads," she said. "The interstates get messed up
pretty early."

Abdul Ghafoor lives in Tucker and works at a body shop in Stone
Mountain. His trip on I-285 can take 40 minutes. "It's a lot of
trouble," he said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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World is at home here
Census finds immigrants abundant in metro Atlanta

Janita Poe
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 22, 2001

Outside the new Latin American Association site on Buford Highway this
week, communications manager Cristina Zavala paused to watch workers
wrestle heavy boxes and dollies into the building.

"We've had to grow with the community," said Zavala, 25, who appeared
tired but upbeat about the organization's move, from a
17,000-square-foot structure to one almost three times that size. "And
the fact is the community has grown."

And not just along Buford Highway, the area's traditional welcome mat
for immigrants. Census survey data released this week confirm that the
area has become one of America's major gateways for foreigners. Latin
Americans, especially Mexicans, are just the biggest wave in a flood
tide of immigrants settling in the area.

In 2000, one in six residents of Gwinnett and DeKalb counties were
foreign-born, according to the Census. In Cobb County, the figure was
one in seven.

In metro Atlanta as a whole, one in 10 residents were from another
country, up from one in 25 a decade earlier.

"The population has reached a critical mass," said David Yu, 51, a
native of Taiwan. He is chairman and one of the founders of Summit
National Bank, which has four branches in metro Atlanta and one in San
Jose, Calif.

"Once people find they can get what they need and the services they want
in their own language, they will come. When you already have people
here, it makes it much more convenient for others to come and to stay
here," Yu said.

The increase in foreign-born residents in metro Atlanta is part of a
national trend. The number of American residents born outside the United
States grew 54 percent between 1990 and 2000.

Many of the new immigrants have settled in suburban communities of
fast-growing cities such as Atlanta, Dallas-Fort Worth, Washington and
Las Vegas, said demographer Audrey Singer of the Brookings Institution.
These new gateways are drawing not just the foreign-born from other
nations, but also from older immigrant magnets, such as New York,
Chicago and Los Angeles.

Immigrants moving to Atlanta and the other new destinations tend to mix
more than they did in older cities, where Asians, Italians, Hispanics,
Polish and others were divided into their own neighborhoods, Singer
said.

"For so long, race in Atlanta has meant this dichotomous idea of black
and white," she said. "Immigrants in Atlanta are taking on the 'other'
role and are more aligned with each other because they represent the
'other' population."

Immigrants in Atlanta have spread out across the suburbs, said
University of Georgia demographer Douglas Bachtel.

"Atlanta is really a city of small towns, and it is extremely spread
out," he said. "That means instead of having a Chinatown or a
Germantown, in Atlanta we have these little nodes all over the place and
the [immigrant] communities are more spread out."

The data show the area's largest group of foreign-born is from Latin
America, and among that group, Mexicans dominate. Asians make up the
second-largest group.

At the Patti Hut Cafe in Midtown, owner John Burrows serves up popular
Jamaican dishes such as jerk chicken, rice and peas and coco bread to a
racially diverse lunchtime crowd.

Burrows, 36, said "everyone is aware of" Atlanta's reputation as a good
place to live and work. He and workers at his restaurant say Stone
Mountain, a hub for Caribbean Atlantans, has about 40 Caribbean-owned
businesses.

"I've had friends . . . in Connecticut and New York who have closed
businesses there and come here to open up," said Burrows, a Jamaica
native who lives in Marietta.

Burrows said one reason foreign-born newcomers are drawn to Atlanta is
because it is home to a district office of the U.S. Immigration and
Naturalization Service, which makes government paperwork easier. In
addition, he said, having the nation's busiest airport makes it
convenient to travel to family in other parts of the country and world.

But economic opportunity is the big draw. Atlanta seems fertile ground
compared with cities already burgeoning with immigrants. "It is easier
to come here and establish yourself than it is in New York or Miami,"
Burrows said. "It's not saturated with entrepreneurs."

UGA's Bachtel said the presence of Burrows and other immigrants adds to
the economic, social and cultural fabric of metro Atlanta.
"There is a universal law of migration," the demographer said. "That law
says migrants have more pizazz; they are a different breed from the
people who don't leave home. They bring this incredible vitality and
that adds to this dynamic economic environment we have here.

"It sort of jazzes things up."

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Atlanta became big city in the ‘90s

Maurice Tamman
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
November 20, 2001

Metro Atlanta grew up in the 1990s, with area residents increasingly
faced with mature city issues.

According to the latest wave of census estimates, released Tuesday, the
cost of inner-city home ownership skyrocketed. And the average daily
round-trip commute from the less-expensive suburbs ballooned to almost
an hour.

And while foreigners were relatively uncommon in 1990, nearly one in 10
metro residents are now from other countries, a share that approaches
the national average.

"Atlanta has become just like any big city," State Demographer Robert
Giacomini said.

The data comes from the Census Bureau's Supplemental Survey 2000. It is
a glimpse into demographic and economic information gathered from the
Census 2000 "long form."

The Census Bureau asked the same long-form questions of 700,000 people
across the country in the summer of 2000. The survey was done as part of
the bureau's plans to possibly eliminate the long form and replace it
with annual surveys. Information taken from the actual 2000 census long
form, sent to about one in six households in the spring of 2000, is
expected to be released early next year.

Because of the size of the supplemental survey in 2000, only a handful
of areas in Georgia were large enough to produce statistically valid
results. They include the metro area of Atlanta, the counties of Cobb,
DeKalb, Fulton and Gwinnett and the city of Atlanta.

Grant Park Realtor Larry Arney said the inner-city real estate boom took
off in the mid-1990s, as suburbanites tired of their commute.

"That's the whole reason I have a business," Arney said. "And there
still is great movement of people coming closer into town."

In 1990, the typical round-trip commute for metro Atlanta was about 50
minutes. By 2000, it had grown to about 60 minutes. More than half the
commuters in Gwinnett, DeKalb, and the area of Fulton County outside
Atlanta average more than 60 minutes getting to work everyday. They
usually were stuck in cars by themselves: for the metro area, 78 percent
commuted solo, 12 percent car pooled and 4 percent used public
transportation.

The cost of living in safe neighborhoods with decent schools, however,
still forces many to buy homes outside the city. For most of the metro
area, inflation-adjusted home ownership costs, primarily mortgage
payments, remained flat. But they leaped about $300 per month for city
residents, Giacomini said.

It's all part of a city growing up. Other trends reflect that: In the
city, 46 percent of adults have never been married, well above the state
and national average. Even in the suburban counties, such as Cobb and
DeKalb, the rate of single adults grew faster than the number of people
opting to wed. The area became more diverse, and much of that diversity
was driven by immigration from Latin America and Asia, accounting for
nearly 80 percent of foreigners who moved to the area in the 1990s. In
2000, the percentage of foreigners living in metro Atlanta reached 10
percent of the population.

"For most of our history, we did not take part in the waves of
immigration," Giacomini said. "And that has really changed."
Increasingly, grandparents found themselves caring for their children's
children. Though no data is available for 1990s, experts agree it's a
growing trend. And it appears to be a long-term arrangement: Nearly 60
percent, in both metro Atlanta and the nation, have cared for their
grandchildren for more than two years.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Newnan fights against sprawl

Brenden Sager
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
October 22, 2001

Facing the prospect of becoming yet another humdrum Atlanta bedroom
community, Newnan city planners are working to preserve their town's
historic character.

Newnan, spared by General Sherman's torch, has for years marched toward
urban sprawl. Roads have been widened for big-box retail stores, traffic
has been routed away from the town square and farmland has been zoned
for massive subdivisions.

The size of Newnan has more than doubled since 1954, with most of the
annexations occurring within the last decade.

Now, city officials are putting on the brakes.

"Here in Newnan, we don't have to copy Marietta and Gwinnett," said
Newnan Planning Director Cleatus Phillips.

Newnan, the self-styled City of Homes, offers stately intown Victorians
surrounding a small courthouse square. Magnates of a bygone agrarian era
put the town on the map, filling it with cotton and textile mills.
Working-class shotgun houses surround the cavernous, now-closed mills,
lending the city a rustic charm.

But, over the years, real estate investors bought many of the houses for
rental property, and mom-and-pop retail stores closed downtown. The
folks who moved to Newnan, for the most part, deserted the town during
the day for jobs in Atlanta or at Hartsfield International Airport.

Faced with the first signs of urban decay, local politicians annexed the
land between the city and I-85. Farmland soon became large-scale
subdivisions. Restaurants and big-box retail along Bullsboro Drive
sprang up between downtown Newnan and the interstate.

And now, they're trying to draw them back to downtown Newnan, with
sweeping revitalization projects funded with tax money from new
development. Officials have rebuilt sidewalks, planted trees and
installed new lighting in downtown Newnan in a multimillion-dollar
streetscape project slated to end this month.

City officials say Newnan likely won't annex any more large tracts. In
1954, Newnan consisted of 7 square miles. Today, it encompasses 18.6
miles.

The challenge now is to manage the anticipated population growth. The
Coweta County town has about 16,000 residents, and officials estimate
there will be more than 28,000 in 2020, Phillips said. But officials
also want to make sure new development doesn't ravage the city's
character, the narrow streets, ornate houses and sidewalk-level stores.

"We don't try to compete with Wal-Mart. My merchants know that they have
to work hard to keep what they have," said Linda Bridges, business
development and special events coordinator for the city of Newnan.
"We've never been a dead city rying for a comeback. We're pretty vital."

Bridges is also executive director of Main Street Newnan, a nonprofit
organization dedicated to preserving downtown. She is looking for
high-end restaurants, retail and professional offices to fill commercial
space downtown.

Citing a marketing study, she said about 1,600 people work downtown each
day. "That's a tremendous market every day," she said.

But others say downtown Newnan still has a long way to go. Barbara
Tumperi, president of the Greenville-LaGrange Neighborhood Association,
said downtown is a far cry from its heyday. She moved there 23 years ago
when department stores, a movie theater and pharmacies served the
community.

"I just don't feel that there are as many stores or as [much of] a
variety of places to shop," she said.

Further, Tumperi is still puzzled by Newnan residents who live in the
city's subdivisions and don't even know that downtown Newnan exists.
Some of the people don't even know where downtown is," she said.

Tumperi said it's more convenient for Newnan's far-flung residents to
shop in Atlanta and Peachtree City rather than their own town because of
their access to major thoroughfares --- as opposed to Newnan's cramped
streets and scarce parking.

Still, Newnan residents are optimistic about the future of their little
city. Both mayoral candidates are running on a platform promoting
downtown development. Phillips, the city planner, has a "Fight Sprawl,
Shop Downtown" bumper sticker on his desk.

"To me there is a future for such a viable, visible downtown that has
such a historic courthouse in great condition," Tumperi said. "You drive
through a lot of small towns, they don't have a courthouse in the center
of town and half the stores are boarded up."

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

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Study says Georgia tops heartland states in immigration influx

Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free Press
October 4, 2001

WASHINGTON -- A new county-by-county report of population shows a
historic influx of immigrants into the nation's heartland, with Georgia
posting the greatest increases.

Twenty-five counties in Georgia, more than in any other state,
experienced a 50 percent or more rise in immigration from 1990 to 1998,
according to the study released Wednesday by the Center for Immigration
Studies in Washington.

The private research group seeks to reduce the immigration flow.

The study provides a clear statistical picture of what journalists and
demographers have been reporting: a major dispersal of newcomers, who
for decades tended to stay in California, New York, Florida and Texas.

It designated 223 counties nationwide as the "new Ellis Islands" based
on increases of at least 50 percent in the foreign-born population. Most
of these counties are in the South and Midwest.

Steven Camarota, the author of the study, said he compared the number of
foreign-born residents from the 1990 Census with the number of permanent
visas granted by the United States from 1991-98 for each county.

Most of these counties are in the South and Midwest, said Steven
Camarota, the author of the study. He said his data did not include
illegal residents.

Newcomers from Mexico and India, as well as refugees from a variety of
counties, especially Vietnam and the former Soviet Union, make up the
largest numbers of new residents in the South and Midwest, Camarota
said.

The 25 new "Ellis Islands" in Georgia included Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb,
Rockdale, Forsyth and Henry counties.

Camarota said that county Census numbers for 2000, which are not yet
available, would almost certainly increase the estimates of new
arrivals. The Census includes illegal residents as well as legal visa
holders.

Minnesota and Kentucky, ranked second, with 18 counties each. Virginia
had 13, and Tennessee and North Carolina had 12.

Other states that saw big increases in some counties included Indiana
with 11, Mississippi, Missouri and Iowa with 10, and Texas, Alabama,
Louisiana, Illinois and Colorado with 5 that fit the definition of a new
immigrant destination.

A ranking of metropolitan areas that have seen the biggest boost in
immigration also showed movement toward the heartland.

Nashville, had the highest increase, a jump of 57 percent in foreign
newcomers. Atlanta was second at 53 percent. Louisville, Ky., was third.

Camarota said that the new trend was caused in part by the "saturation"
of low-skilled immigrants in California and other states, which has
pushed some newcomers to seek jobs elsewhere.

He cited efforts by local industries to recruit low wage immigrants for
meat packing, farm work and manufacturing.

Further, he said that refugee service centers, which offer federally
sponsored aid to refugees who qualify for humanitarian asylum, are
attracting increased number of refugee settlers from places such as
Somalia, Sudan and the former Soviet Union to the nation's mid section.

In the Atlanta area, the newcomers provide an unusually varied mix of
national origins.

The report found recent immigrants in Fulton County came primarily from
Vietnam, the former Soviet Union and Mexico, but that many other
countries were represented, such as China, the United Kingdom, Ethiopia
and Iran.

Gwinnett County had a similar range, with the top countries being India,
China and Vietnam.

Smaller counties tended to have a greater percentage of Mexicans among
the newcomers.

The statistical breakdown provides evidence that immigration issues,
such as proposed amnesty for illegal residents, will increasingly become
important to more communities and more lawmakers, said Mark Krikorian,
executive director of the Center for Immigration Studies.

"This brings this issue home in a way it never has," he said. His group
holds that the United States admits too many immigrants, especially
unskilled workers. That view has been contested by pro-immigration
groups, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has sought to
increase the labor force.

© Copyright 2001 Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free Press

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Census reveals youthfulness of Georgia
Population soars among under-18

Brian Basinger
Florida Times-Union
October 4, 2001

Georgia is one of five states that saw its under-18 population increase
by more than 25 percent between 1990 and 2000, the U.S. Census Bureau
reported yesterday.

While the under-18 population grew by 14 percent across the country, it
jumped a whopping 26 percent in Georgia.

Even larger gains were made in the under-18 population in Nevada,
Arizona, Colorado and Florida.

Much of the increase in Georgia can be attributed to high birth rates
among blacks, University of Georgia demographer Doug Bachtel said.

'There's a rather significant difference between the ages of whites and
blacks," Bachtel said. 'Whites tend to live longer. Blacks tend to have
higher birth rates."

Georgia is roughly 30 percent black. The national average is about 12.5
percent black.

Statewide, the birth rate among women aged 14 to 44 is 16 births per
1,000 women. However, when broken down by race, the white birth rate is
14.8 per 1,000, while the black birth rate is 18.9 per 1,000.

Such large increases in the under-18 age group could become the center
of major governmental squabbles, Bachtel said, due to the need for more
tax dollars to support such things as public schools.

'Children are not part of the tax-paying public," Bachtel said. 'They're
part of the tax-receiving public."

In other news yesterday, the Census Bureau reported that Clarke County
-- home of the University of Georgia -- is one of only four counties in
the United States with a population of more than 100,000 and a median
age below 26 years, making Athens one of the youngest mid-sized cities
in the country.

Median age is the dividing marker for a population: half the people are
older, half are younger.

The United States' median age in 2000 was 35.5 years old and 33.4 in
Georgia. Clarke County's median age, however, was 25.4.

The only other three counties with similar demographics are Utah County,
Utah, home of Provo and Utah Technical College; Brazos County, Texas,
where Texas A&M University is in College Station; and Onslow County,
N.C., where the U.S. Marine Corps' Camp LeJeune is located.

'Athens is the best of both worlds," said Zoe Minor, a full-time student
from Jonesboro who also works as a tour guide for UGa.

'Athens is a little big city," she said. 'We've got a lot of the perks
of being close to a big city, but you can appreciate the slower pace,
the more down-home charm, lots of people saying, 'Hi,' in the street."

Bachtel attributed the youthful face of Clarke County in part to the

location of the university, as well as Clarke's relatively high black
population.

Even without the university, Clarke County's relatively youthful, large
black population makes the county significantly younger than most other
counties its size.

'You don't have all that many college towns that have that big an
African-American population," Bachtel said.

© Copyright 2001 Florida Times-Union

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Respect for trees growing stronger

Julie B. Hairston
Atlanta Journal Constitution
September 24, 2001

Metro Atlanta's canopy of laws to protect and enhance its tree
population has provided only spotty sanctuary so far.

The region is still losing 50 acres of trees daily, according to Marcia
Bansley, executive director of Trees Atlanta.

But developers are slowly changing their clear-cutting ways. Governments
are adding new incentives and resources to encourage tree planting and
retention. And everyday citizens are taking up the causes of
neighborhood trees and groves.

Nearly every city and county in the metro Atlanta area has adopted a
tree protection ordinance in the past 10 years. Most of the largest
jurisdictions have strengthened their ordinances recently to include new
conservation practices or more exacting standards for developers, or are
planning changes.

And they have hired arborists to ride herd on developers through the
planning process.

Ed Macie, an urban forester with the U.S. Forest Service based in
Atlanta, says the governments are creating tree-cutting rules because
their citizens demand them. "An ordinance is a public policy, so it is
an articulation of public will. Public participation is an important
part of that," he said.

Up until 1999, Cherokee County had no tree ordinance at all. Now,
"floating inspector" Christine White is charged with ensuring
tree-saving compliance from all residential and commercial builders in
the booming county. Cherokee issued 3,000 building permits last year.

"Compared to what we used to have --- we didn't have anything --- we
really have helped save our tree cover," White said, "and we're seeing a
lot more environmentally conscious development."

The marquee project for environmental consciousness in Cherokee has
begun construction near Canton. Approved under a special Conservation
Subdivision designation, Governor's Preserve will include 431 homes on
an 862-acre parcel bordered by the Etowah River.

By clustering the homes on 304 acres, the development will preserve 558
acres of permanent green space, including a wooded 3.6- mile belt on the
riverbank. Home prices in the first phase of the project start at
$350,000.

"There is some cost" to saving all those trees, said developer Dick
Lawson, "but the benefits have greatly outweighed the costs for us."

The conservation subdivision ordinance allows developers to increase
density and save development costs by clustering construction on smaller
lots. In exchange, the developer must commit to setting aside at least
20 percent of the parcel's land for permanent green space.

Gwinnett County's zoning laws were amended in May to include provisions,
modeled on the Cherokee ordinance, for conservation subdivisions. Other
Georgia counties, including Henry and Jackson, may soon follow suit.

Atlanta tree advocates stress that the best tree protection occurs long
before construction begins.

"An ordinance that plans for tree protection early on in the development
process gives [the developer] a lot of flexibility because it allows for
design changes," said U.S. forester Macie.

Cobb County has done a good job through the years of working closely
with developers to maintain trees, he said. However, the city of Atlanta
has "an army of arborists" but an ordinance so lacking in specifics it
is nearly unenforceable.

Atlanta has new regulations under consideration, said Bansley, executive
director of Trees Atlanta and a member of Atlanta's tree commission. But
she believes the new ordinance under consideration is only a little
better than the current regulations.

"The problem is that it's almost unintelligible, but the political will
to start all over again isn't there," Bansley said. Atlanta Bureau of
Buildings Director Norman Koplon said tree protection is a priority in
the city's construction codes, but he acknowledges the vague language of
the tree ordinance is a problem.

"There's some merit to those arguments, but it's the best we have to
work with," Koplon said.

The city's lack of standards for tree removal was one of the central
arguments in a complaint filed at the end of August by a Home Park
property owner against the developer of the Atlantic Station project.

The city tree commission had denied Dan O'Boyle's protest against Jacoby
Development's plan to remove a swath of old-growth trees bordering the
16th Street corridor of the project.

O'Boyle's attorney, Ed Martin, a former forest ranger now studying for a
Ph.D. in forestry from the University of Georgia, argued in his appeal
filed in Fulton Superior Court that the city's ordinance is "fatally
flawed."

"Unless there's a dedicated effort built into the legislative and
administrative process," Martin said, "you're going to nibble [the urban
forest] away."

Most of the tree removal in Home Park has been halted until the suit is
resolved.

Bansley and Macie said the greatest weakness in current tree regulations
is the absence of requirements that parking lots contain significant
tree cover.

"What we're doing is removing an ecological system and putting in
hardscape, with all the consequences that come with that," Macie said.
Surface temperatures, storm runoff and pollution all increase with the
construction of paved parking lots, according to Macie.

Developers are getting the message about tree protection, said local
arborists, but many are frustrated by the differences in standards and
approaches among metro Atlanta's multitude of cities and counties.

"We try to be good developers," said Warren Jolly, president of Jolly
Development. But regulations "need to be specified in black and white.
Some of them are discretionary on the part of the arborist. Sometimes,
you can get two different answers from two people in the same county."

The residential developers said that tree protection does cost them
money early in the project, but the attractiveness of the final product
makes the investment worthwhile.

"Once [developers] know what's expected of them, they will typically do
the right thing," said Les Brewer, Cobb County's arborist for the past
10 years.

Still, few site plans pass muster on tree requirements in their first
submission, he said. Tree ordinances create a framework for talking
about what should be done and how to accomplish it.

"We've managed to save quite a few [old] trees just by jawboning,"
Brewer said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

Back to Index

County's growth rate still climbing, ARC says

John McCosh
Atlanta Journal and Constitution
August 27, 2001

When Bart Lewis moved to metro Atlanta for a new job in 1980, he first
stayed with friends in Peachtree Corners and made a demographer's mental
note.

The news had just come out that the very census tract where he had spent
the night --- 503.02 --- was the fastest growing in the country.

Now the Atlanta Regional Commission's chief demographer, Lewis expresses
surprise that Gwinnett continues attracting even more people than it did
during its fastest-growth years.

The ARC released estimates last week that peg Gwinnett's population at
614,500, with 26,052 new people added last year.

"That's almost four times the 1980s population," Lewis said. "That's a
pretty remarkable switch in 21 years."

Gwinnett Commission Chairman Wayne Hill is fond of saying that he didn't
ask all these people to come to the county, but it's his job to prepare
for all the growth. And, he's expressed doubt that the rate at which
people flock to

Gwinnett will slow down soon. Hill likes to point out that the huge
county still has around 40 percent of its land vacant and developable.

But some of those areas don't figure to be primed for the same kind of
rapid development that's spread over much of the county since Jimmy
Carter left the White House.

The north central section is nearing the top of its growth curve, Lewis
said, with land filling up and traffic congestion reaching critical
mass. As developers look at land south from there toward Snellville,
they'll run into accessibility problems.

Although north of the Mall of Georgia there are wide open spaces, one
year soon, Gwinnett's unbelievable population explosion has to slow,
Lewis said. Even though Gwinnett does have a lot of land that still
could be developed, he said, not much of it has the great access to I-85
that spurred so much of the growth of the past 20 years.

And pro-growth policies that lay the groundwork for new people don't
have the same political support that existed in the 1980s, as residents
become increasingly concerned about traffic.

The population is also changing in ways other than numbers. Lewis said
the increase of apartments and condominiums in areas such as Peachtree
Corners is contributing to a new kind of household forming in the area.
The multifamily housing tends to attract a slightly smaller household.

"But the real thrust of growth in Gwinnett remains what it has been
since World War II," Lewis said. "Basically, it's still going to be
single-family housing that's driving the truck."

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal Constitution

Back to the Index

Back to the Index

Sprawl tests Atlanta's limits

City pays price for unchecked growth

Dahleen Glanton
Chicago Tribune
August 7, 2001

ATLANTA -- For more than a decade, Atlanta has been the epicenter of a
population explosion in the South, luring more than 1.3 million new
residents to the area since 1990 with the promise of jobs, a pleasant
climate and affordable housing.

But while the influx contributed to a flourishing economy, developers
have been allowed to gulp land in every direction, with suburban Atlanta
spilling over small communities that once took pride in their
independence from the big city. Residents are paying for this
unrestrained growth through air pollution, diminishing green space and
the longest commutes in the U.S.

If the prototype of smart growth is Portland, Ore., Atlanta is exhibit A
for urban sprawl. Other Southern cities that are experiencing population
booms, such as Charlotte, Nashville and Birmingham, Ala., look at
Atlanta for examples of what not to do when managing growth.

"By most indicators, Atlanta is the most sprawled major metro area in
the country," said George Galster, an urban affairs professor at Wayne
State University in Detroit and co-author of a study on urban sprawl
supported by the Fannie Mae Foundation. "Atlanta is justifiably a model
to examine for a metro area that has a booming population that is
relatively unconstrained by topographical or climatic factors, a lack of
growth controls or strong planning legislation and has developed
primarily in an era when the auto was king."

Historically, Georgia has tried to solve its transportation problems by
adding new roads. As a result, environmentalists said, the Atlanta area
is among the most polluted in the country, a problem that has landed the
state in court and provided the first legal test for national clean air
laws.

This summer, Georgia Gov. Roy Barnes released a long-awaited
transportation plan that outlined an $8.3 billion program to relieve
traffic congestion and improve air quality. For the most part the plan
advocated expanding lanes and constructing additional highways over the
next five years, including the Northern Arc, a proposed 50-mile
east-west connector in Atlanta's far northern suburbs. While the plan
included money to create a commuter rail system in some counties and
expand regional bus systems, critics say it will increase traffic and
does little to address inadequate public transportation linking the city
to the suburbs.

Transportation problems

"The attitude for two decades has been `Let us go ahead and build this
batch of roads and we will deal with air pollution and access to jobs
for people without cars later.' There's been a lot of broken promises,"
said David Farren, an attorney for the Southern Environmental Law
Center.

"Many suburbs have fought vigorously against public transportation. But
in a city that is almost entirely automobile dependent, the lack of
public transportation creates huge issues about how people get to the
suburbs where the new jobs are and enjoy the region's economic
prosperity," Farren said.

Without natural barriers such as an ocean or mountain range, the
20-county metropolitan area as defined by the U.S. census stretches more
than 100 miles across and encompasses 6,126 square miles--an area nearly
the size of Hawaii with the population of Kentucky, about 4.1 million
people.

According to the Fannie Mae sprawl report, houses are spread out more in
the Atlanta area than in any of the 13 cities studied. The low density
rate--806 houses per square mile--has created a metropolitan area that
is almost totally dependent upon cars. The Atlanta density rate compares
with 1,946 houses per square mile in New York City, the highest density
area. Chicago, with 1,647 houses per square mile, ranked higher than the
national average of 1,407.

The sprawling Atlanta area requires residents to drive farther to get
anywhere--34 miles per capita, the highest in the nation--according to
transportation officials. Commuters drive an average of 58 miles to get
to work. Because the area's public transit system serves only two
counties, more than 3 million vehicles pack the roads, traveling 1
million miles a year.

"People do well here, but it has been a double-edged sword," said Tom
Weyandtk, director of comprehensive planning for the Atlanta Regional
Commission, which oversees transportation in 10 counties. "We
anticipated the growth but we never had an agency to implement our plan.
Our challenge is not just transportation but sprawl. Our development
pattern means that we have to drive a long way to our jobs, to get our
kids to school and to get to the stores."

Earl Govert, who has commuted from his home in Peachtree City in the far
south suburbs to his office in Chamblee in the northern suburbs for 51/2
years, has a system to help him make the 46-mile trip in about 11/2
hours on most days.

Govert leaves his office at the Centers for Disease Control at 4:30 p.m.
and heads south on Interstate Highway 85. As he nears downtown, he gets
off at an exit, travels the ramp a half-mile, and gets back on the
freeway, jumping ahead of a few cars. He picks up his wife, Barbara, who
takes the train from her office in Decatur to a downtown station, then
rejoins the gridlock.

If all goes well, the Goverts pull into their driveway at 6 p.m. But if
there's a wreck on the expressway, a Braves baseball game or rain, it
could take three hours.

"In six months, I'm going to retire," said Govert, 56, a human resources
manager at the CDC. "The commute is a pretty big factor. The traffic
gets worse all the time. It's going to get to the point where commuting
by car to work just won't be possible."

Weyandtk said Atlanta has learned from its problems and has done more in
recent years to address them than many other cities.

Innovative projects

Among the most innovative projects, Weyandtk said, is a $5 million
program that encourages neighborhoods to develop land-use plans that
allow for better transportation. An additional $350 million will be
allocated to those communities in the next 10 years to implement those
projects, which include building affordable housing and expanding
mixed-use developments that utilize the rail system.

But if environmentalists get their way, new road projects will be
halted. Several groups have filed a lawsuit against the Georgia and U.S.
Departments of Transportation and the Atlanta Regional Commission to get
the federal government to withhold $400 million in new highway funding
until Atlanta cleans up its smog. Two years ago, the Environmental
Protection Agency cut off federal money for new roads. The ban was
lifted last summer after the state agreed to improve mass transit and
test car emissions every year.

The lawsuit is the first in the nation to seek enforcement of a
provision in the Clean Air Act that prohibits funding new highway
projects in areas where air pollution exceeds national health standards,
said Farren, who represents the Sierra Club, Environmental Defense and
other plaintiffs. The lawsuit also would require officials to follow
through on its promise to expand mass transit.

© Copyright 2001 Chicago Tribune

Back to Index

Region's Ozone Lesson Lies South
Pollution Already Has Cost Atlanta Federal Funds for Roads

Lyndsey Layton and Katherine Shaver
Washington Post
July 23, 2001

In Atlanta and its suburbs, summer no longer means fresh lemonade and
soft breezes on porch swings. Instead, it's "smog season" in a place
where drivers must pay more for cleaner gas, a regional board can block
traffic magnets like new shopping malls, and television ads show sobbing
motorists stuck in jams.

That's what happens when a region's air pollution becomes so unhealthy
that the federal government refuses to spend more money to build roads.

And the Washington region may be next.

If planners don't find quicker ways to reduce the noxious fumes spewing
from local tailpipes in the next 2 1/2 years, the region could become
only the second major metropolitan area, after Atlanta, to lose all
federal transportation money for new construction.

"This is exactly where Atlanta was in about 1996" before it lost federal
road-building money, said Michael Replogle, federal transportation
director of Environmental Defense.

Officials here are looking south for ideas.

"The phone lines are burning down to Atlanta," Metro General Manager
Richard A. White told his board of directors last week.

Both Washington and Atlanta are struggling with nitrogen oxides that
combine in sunlight with another byproduct of vehicle exhaust to form
unhealthy levels of ground-level ozone.

Cleaner fuels and newer cars with more effective emissions controls are
improving Washington's air -- just not fast enough to meet federal ozone
standards by a 2005 deadline. The Clean Air Act, which set those
standards, forced regions to consider the effects on ozone before
building new roads.

Atlanta's loss of federal road money shook up every sector of the
community. Business leaders feared that traffic congestion and dirty air
would sour Atlanta's "New South" economy. Health advocates and
environmentalists worried about frequent "red alert" days. Politicians
felt pressured to find solutions. Together, they agreed to make dramatic
changes, but the results have been moderate.

"Transportation is a very big boat that is slow to turn," said Jeff
Rader, formerly of the city's Chamber of Commerce.

"The progress is incremental at best," added Wesley Woolf, Atlanta
director for the Southern Environmental Law Center.

The federal government pulled the plug on Atlanta's annual road-building
allocation of $153 million from 1998 until July 2000. Although the
region could spend money on safety and repair work, it could not add
roads or highway lanes.

"It wasn't a situation where the bulldozers stopped rolling," said
Barbara McCann, of the Surface Transportation Policy Project. But, she
said, "If it had gone on any longer, more and more of the road projects
would have been affected."

Federal dollars were shifted away from roads and bridges to mass
transit.

"It's been a boon rather than a bust for us," said Steen Miles, a
spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, which
runs a subway and bus system less than half the size of Metro.

In addition to buying cleaner-burning buses, the region plans to pour $7
billion into mass transit -- adding bus routes and its first commuter
rail service, among other things. Last month, Gov. Roy E. Barnes (D)
proposed spending billions more on transit -- a radical departure for
the road-friendly state.

Officials also improved sidewalks, required gas stations to supply the
slightly more expensive but less-polluting low-sulfur gas during summer
and required more frequent vehicle emissions tests.

Universities and government, business and environmental groups
established the Clean Air Campaign, which organizes ride-share programs,
works with employers to offer telecommuting and transit benefits, and
uses a $9 million marketing budget to try to change behavior. One TV ad
shows an elderly man with a walker cruising past a driver fuming in
traffic.

"What really motivates people in Atlanta more than air quality is
traffic congestion," said Ron Methier, of the Georgia Environmental
Protection Division.

The business community, led by the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce,
pushed for a new regional transportation authority to replace a system
where individual projects competed for state money in a more haphazard
way.

The authority has vast powers to own and operate transit systems and
approve the state's transportation spending. Most importantly, it has
final say over any development project that would generate significant
traffic.

"The problem in Atlanta, and maybe in Washington, was that jurisdictions
still have a great deal of influence," said Rader, who worked with the
regional authority and is now with the Greater Atlanta Home Builders
Association. "In many cases, jurisdictional parochialism undermines
regional transportation and land-use strategies."

By last July, the state's changes, combined with its heavy spending on
mass transit, were enough to persuade the federal government to resume
the flow of dollars for road and bridge projects.

But Atlanta's pollution problems are far from over. Environmental groups
have sued state and federal transportation planning agencies, arguing
that they can't possibly pay for promised increases in transit and that
many of the assumptions are flawed.

The loss of federal money "has swayed policymakers into thinking about
[transportation] and planning differently," said Woolf, the
environmental groups' attorney on the suit. "But the plans on paper are
in significant part fictional."

Despite the regional transportation authority's power to make unpopular
choices to help the entire region, critics say it has been stymied by
the same old local politics. "Most of the counties still have a
'manifest destiny' approach to growth," said David Goldberg, editorial
writer for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

As they look for lessons in Atlanta, officials here recognize important
differences between the two regions. Pollution here is less extreme, and
Washington's suburbs are dwarfed by Atlanta's sprawl.

This area offers far more alternatives to driving -- two commuter
railroads, extensive bus service and the nation's second-busiest subway.
Atlanta's subway serves just two of the region's 13 counties. When the
pollution crisis hit, only one county had bus service to the city. As a
result, Atlanta motorists drive farther than Washingtonians, and the
city's faster sprawl means that's likely to continue.

Still, in the Washington region, the prospect of losing even one federal
dollar when the transportation network is stretched to its limits makes
officials nervous.

On Wednesday, the regional Transportation Planning Board created a task
force to come up with solutions and head off what it considers a looming
crisis. Those measures, such as buying Metrobuses that use cleaner fuel
and replacing older taxis, will likely cost the District, Maryland and
Virginia in the tens of millions while still proving difficult to reduce
emissions enough, one transportation expert said.

Maryland and District officials say no major construction projects would
immediately be jeopardized. In Virginia, though, the air-quality
problems will surely delay the widening of Route 28 in the clogged
Dulles corridor and the conversion of seven intersections to
stoplight-free interchanges, state officials say.

Metro says projects already underway, including the Blue Line extension
to Largo, the New York Avenue Station on the Red Line and rail to Dulles
International Airport, are safe. But a pollution crisis could block
funds for other plans, including rail over the new Woodrow Wilson
Bridge, new track through downtown Washington and plans to expand
parking at suburban Metro stations.

Ronald Kirby, transportation planning director for the Metropolitan
Washington Council of Governments, said that local officials know they
must act quickly.

"The experience of Atlanta shows it doesn't help to be thrashing around
and fighting over whether the problem is real or who's at fault," Kirby
said. "Almost everyone is now saying 'Okay, we have to deal with the
problem.' "

© Copyright 2001 Washington Post

Lane Ranger: 'Smart growth' doubter still at it

Joey Ledford
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 15, 2001

Jekyll Island --- Smart growth isn't smart at all, says Wendell Cox. It
isn't a cure for traffic congestion, or for sprawl.

Cox, a transportation consultant, earned headlines for a report he
penned for the Georgia Public Policy Foundation last year that advocated
the rebuilding of metro Atlanta's surface street network into a grid
system. He was holding court last week at a meeting of state
transportation engineers.

His contrarian yet thought-provoking views haven't changed. In fact,
he's even more outspoken that metro Atlanta's transportation policy is
far off-course.

"My whole point on smart growth is that its advocates have not made
their point," he said of the popular catchphrase for mixed-use,
higher-density developments served by mass transit. "The 'smart growth'
people have not identified a problem sufficient to justify their
solutions."

The average European city has a transit market share of 20 percent,
compared with just 5 percent in the United States, he said. Yet the
average European city has the "traffic density of Los Angeles."

"When you put more cars into the same place, you're going to make
traffic worse," he said. "The theory that smart growth is going to make
traffic better is just plain wrong."

Higher-density developments lead to more traffic, not less, Cox said.

"For every 1 percent increase in density, trends show a 0.8 percent
increase in traffic," he said.

Air quality is not a reason for Atlanta to abandon its suburbanized
lifestyle, he added.

"Air pollution is not getting worse in Atlanta," he said. "The truth is
we are making progress in air pollution and we're going to make more"
because automakers are building cleaner motor vehicles.

Cox dismisses most of metro Atlanta's proposed solutions to its traffic,
sprawl and air quality woes. Light rail won't have any positive impact
on traffic, he said, and though he said he prefers heavy MARTA rail to
light rail, he's not terribly fond of it, either.

For what it costs to attract a new rider to mass transit, Cox said, you
could lease that individual a new car every three years. And to make his
point even more biting, he said you could let the would-be transit rider
choose between a Jaguar or a Mercedes.

"Transit doesn't reduce traffic," he said. "It doesn't get enough people
out of their cars."

Transit is a solution for workers in downtown areas, but Cox argues that
only 6 percent to 7 percent of Atlanta's work force is downtown, a
figure supported by Atlanta Regional Commission surveys. The entire
city, including Buckhead, encompasses 22.5 percent of the metro work
force, said the ARC.

"There's no way you are ever going to serve Perimeter or Cumberland Mall
with mass transit," Cox said. "What are you going to do when you get
them there? They can't walk."

State officials are pushing bus shuttles for high-activity areas like
Perimeter and Cumberland, a point Cox did not address.

Cox is adamantly pro pavement, so one would think he'd be the biggest
fan of the proposed Northern Arc, a highway that would connect
communities across metro Atlanta's fast-developing far Northside. Not
necessarily.

"I'm not sure the Northern Arc is my favorite project," he said.

But there's a controversial caveat.

"You could justify TWO freeways between the Perimeter and the Northern
Arc," Cox said, describing Atlanta's Northside as badly underserved by
freeways.

But that's one of the biggest flaws in Cox's logic. He apparently
proposes the leveling of scores of metro Atlanta's sprawling suburban
subdivisions and business districts to retrofit the region with more
freeways and a grid system of surface streets.

"The biggest problem you have in Atlanta is the lack of an arterial
support street system," he said.

That's true. But most experts say Atlanta can't change that --- it's too
late in the game.

Cox's main thesis, though, is very much the truth, not just for Atlanta,
but for America in general.

"The overwhelming reality of the future of transportation in this
country is that automobile use will continue to increase, and it's time
we recognize that," he said. "People will not abandon cars for transit
because it does not take them where they are going."

Cox also took some time to blast Gov. Roy Barnes' $8.5 billion state
transportation plan, which devotes 55 percent of that bonded funding to
transit projects.

That 55 percent, he said, will net a 1 percent increase in transit
ridership. However, Jane Hayse, the Atlanta Regional Commission's
transportation planning director, countered that transit work trips
could increase by 5 percent to 6 percent.

"The problems of transportation in Atlanta are a lot bigger than can be
solved with traditional transit ideas," Cox said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Back to Index

Trees deemed a priority for fast-growing Suwanee
Mayor's speech stresses need for controlled development

Pearce Adams
Atlanta Journal-Constitution
July 14, 2001

To stay up with a trend that has almost tripled Suwanee's population in
10 years, the city is developing plans to manage growth in the core area
of Old Town and to preserve more open land throughout its borders, Mayor
Nick Masino said.

"We're growing, and we're growing fast," Masino said this week in his
State of the City address to 60 people, including members of the Suwanee
Business Alliance.

In the city of more than 9,000, with a reputation as a high-tech hub and
a booming residential area, Masino's message of controlled growth was
well received.

"Wonderful," said Bill Thee, who serves on the Downtown Development
Authority and other committees.

Even though development has left multi-acre tracts stripped of
vegetation and trees, Masino pushed several steps: a commitment to leave
27 percent of the city undeveloped; the planting of hundreds of trees
each Arbor Day; and efforts to preserve specimen trees.

"I don't want trees to become an endangered species in Suwanee," he
said.

Reports on the city's plans for open space and recreation plan should be
available early in 2002, Masino said.

The master plan could determine development in 560 acres surrounding
City Hall. The open space study will be used to define future recreation
needs and help connect the city with a network of pedestrian trails.

Former city leaders developed the two-mile Richard Trice Trail.

A $750,000 grant and other funds will be used to extend the trail in
Suwanee, while efforts by other communities should eventually create a
pedestrian pathway between Duluth and the Mall of Georgia, the mayor
said.

That was good news for Maria Stanfield.

"I would like to spend more time there," she said.

© Copyright 2001 Atlanta Journal-Constitution